This invention relates to a system for the control and monitoring of the electronic sanitary appliances with a command level, an automation level and a field level, and particularly to such systems in which the automation stations provided in the automation level are each connected to several sanitary appliances through a field bus.
The applicant has developed a system for the control of sanitary installations in buildings which is known under the designation of AQUA 3000. This system is subdivided in a hierarchical manner into a management level or command level, an automation level and a field level.
On the field level, all the water course operations required for the user are taking place by means of the appropriate sanitary appliances. The electronic sanitary appliances ready for bus are integrated into the data communication network for the control and monitoring through a four conductor cable, and are supplied moreover with the voltage required for their operation.
On the automation level, detecting, monitoring, regulating, controlling and optimizing of all sanitary engineering water course operations is achieved in so-called automation stations, which are each connected to several sanitary appliances through a field bus. Here, the peak load optimizations, automatic sequence controls as well as the maintenance management and safety measures are the most important areas of responsibility.
On the topmost level, the management level or command level is achieved operating, monitoring, analyzing and logging of all sanitary engineering processes.
As previously mentioned, this known system requires a four conductor line connection to each sanitary appliance, wherein two conductors are needed for the voltage supply and two conductors are needed for the data communications to transmit instructions, condition statements and the like. Here, a problem results, however, in particular with retrofitting of available sanitary installations, the sanitary appliances usually have not been electrically operated heretofore, and hence did not include an electrical line terminal. If such an appliance has been substituted by an electrically operated appliance, the problem of electric power supply was solved in that the new appliance was provided with a battery. Thus, there is still not the possibility, however, to integrate the appliance into a general system for the control and monitoring of appliances. Also with sanitary installations to be newly installed, it may sometimes be useful to do without a line-bound electric terminal and to use battery-operated appliances.
Therefore, it is the object of the present invention to develop a system for the control and monitoring of electronic sanitary appliances with a command level, an automation level and a field level, in which automation stations provided in the automation level are each connected to a plurality of sanitary appliances through a field bus, wherein the system allows one to integrate sanitary appliances provided without any electrical line terminal into the system as well.